Convention and Agroecological Research Center
National University of La Plata 2023
Final Degree Project (presentation excerpts)
The project is located in the Capitán Sarmiento district, Buenos Aires, and is integrated into a master plan I designed previously.
The pampean plain and two components I consider constituent of its identity: the horizon and agriculture.
Agriculture, its ontology and the role of the insertion site as a bellows between the countryside and the city.
Design strategies. First morphological decisions regarding the programmatic distinction and the insertion.
Architectural concept: Horizon building, gate building
«The construction of a perfect horizontal, which does not exist in nature, demands a great dose of invention.» — Mendes Da Rocha
The agroecological park as part of the city, linked to the master plan and the theoretical analysis.
The rural park is the city's culmination into the countryside. The civic axis crosses the center and continues its path to this point, where residents gather and, through a plaza, the pampean landscape is given value.
The research center levitates over the landscape, creating a threshold, while the convention center obstructs the perspective, hiding the horizon. The space between both programs belongs to the community and is an expression of the center's social, environmental and technological development. Its condition is one of absolute flexibility and it adapts to needs, creating interruptions in the landscape as a country gate would when opening and closing.
Level + 0.00 | Convention Center
The convention level is structured around an internal courtyard and shelters itself from the infinite horizon. Along the path one takes inside, one encounters a space that expands and contracts, and that connects with the exterior at different moments. The end of this path recovers the visual relationship with the horizon and emotionally heightens this encounter with a reflecting pool.
Level + 4.30 | Urban gate
The main hall is located on this floor. Its limits dissolve and its edges curve to enhance the 360-degree relationship one achieves at this height with the horizon and the pampean plain (it sits at 4.30 m height).
Level + 8.80 | Research center
This level focuses on agroecological studies, and the interior is given a diaphanous lighting achieved through the exterior textile skin, which allows light to be controlled and diffused according to specific requirements.
